Same Old Brand New You
by SYuuri
Summary: Tommy needs to fix this mess and he'd better do it fast. TommyKim. ONESHOT.


**Same Old Brand New You**

**Disclaimer:****I don't own Power Rangers, doing this just for fun.**

**:: The words in Italic is for flashback and this story is obviously another oneshot AU.**

* * *

-- 

As Tommy stepped into the Youth Center, he was greeted by the sweetest sight of Kimberly Hart all dressed up in a pale pink sundress. Her hair was loose framing her face and his heart thumped a bit faster when she noticebly brightened up upon seeing him enter.

"Tommy!"

"Hey, Kim," He replied with a bashful smile. Sure, the petite pink ranger was always so bubbly and full of life, but it was something else to see her act this way towards him. From the corner of his eyes, Jason and the others were shooting him knowing grins—something that he still disliked even now. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. I'm just so glad that Rita was wise enough for once and didn't send out those nasty putties or some hideous monster to ruin my day," Kim chatted animatedly, her hands swinging at her sides and those eyes looking up at him expectantly. Then to his amazement, Kim twirled around, causing her hair to bounce on her shoulders. "So, how do I look? I bought this last Saturday, there's a big sale at the mall,"

Tommy swallowed hard, a small portion of his brain wondering about Kim's more than slightly weird behavior while the rest of it trying to wrap itself around the fact that Kimberly Hart was flirting with him. Wasn't she? "You look great,"

"Thank you!" She grabbed his hand and pulled him along with her to join the others. With a little shove, Kim asked him to sit at the chair next to their genius of a friend, Billy. Tommy nearly jumped when all of a sudden he felt nimble fingers rubbing his rock tight shoulders. When he lifted his head, Kim's innocent smile graced him as if what she was doing was nothing more than a daily routine.

"Kimberly?" He stammered, trying to focus on his question and not the wonderful feelings growing inside him.

"Yes, Tommy?"

"Are you… feeling alright?"

"I am… why'd you ask?"

He could feel the weight of her gaze on him though she didn't cease the massage. Slowly and carefully shrugging off his shoulders, Tommy turned around to face her. However, before he could utter one word, a bright smile tugged at the corner of Kim's lips.

"You know what Tommy? I made you a lunch box!"

Tommy's eyes skirted from Kim's retreating figure and back to his teammates, his eyes conveying tons of unspoken questions, but they continued working on their homework. The usually loud Zack was being unexpectedly quiet when he normally would have started teasing him to death. "A lunch box?"

Returning a minute later, Kim leaned over and proudly presented a green lunch box that seemed to appear from out of nowhere. Her sweet jasmine shampoo wafted to his nose and infaded his senses when Kim reached around to open it. "Ta-da!"

The former green ranger didn't know whether he wanted to cry or laugh more. For someone who had claimed didn't have the skill at cooking, Kim certainly had tried really hard this time. For a while all he was able to do was stare at the two sunny side-up eggs that returned his gaze back. Tommy's eyes moved down to the nose—a sausage, and finally to a line of green peas that he assumed was the mouth.

"Do you like it? I woke up at five a.m. just to make this for you," Kim declared fiercely and showed her fingers to him; some of them were bandaged. "Well, I cut myself a few times, but the food tasted pretty good. The titanic had no match against my kitchen now, I guess I messed up a bit,"

As he found his throat went dry, Kim plopped down on the seat beside him and propped up her head on her hands, her eyes boring at him in anticipation.

"Um… don't you have gymnastics practise?" Tommy asked, trying to stall. As much as he wanted to say that it was so damn sweet of her to go through all the troubles for him, there's something off. And not just Kim, but everybody else also. His only guess was that the Evil Empress had something to with this. What else could possibly explain this whole thing?

"Well, I just had my nails done yesterday so I don't want to ruin it," Kim wiggled her pink polished nails in front of his face and sighed deeply. "Then again, I would be all sweating and it's kind of gross, don't you think so?"

"Yeah, no, I mean-," The way Kim spoke, giggled and twirled a strand of her hair around her fingers… he couldn't believe he was actually saying this, but they had started to bother him, big time.

All of a sudden, a complete darkness engulfed him and he quickly put on a fighting stance, but the light returned as abruptly as it had vanished.

"Tommy, what are you doing?"

Blinking back some dizziness, Tommy realized that he was standing in the middle of Ms. Appleby's class with her glaring at him. Around him, the students had started snickering. "Ms. Appleby, I was just-,"

"Sit down," The teacher ordered.

Feeling completely confused and lost, Tommy did what he was told. What the hell was happening here? Wasn't he just in the Juice Bar a minute ago, having a _weird_ conversation with Kimberly?

Talking about Kimberly, the brunette sitting at the front row of the class suddenly stood up, replacing Billy who had just finished talking about NASA.

"Alright, I used to dream of being a famous, accomplished gymnast," She began and Tommy could breathe a little easier. Seemed everything had gone back normal. He should've known better that it was never a good idea to stay up so late, watching TV and eating chocolates. _Wait! Did she just say 'used to'?_ "There're numerous competetions I had ever been in and although I didn't win in some of them, they are such a great experience for me. They taught me a lot and made a better person. However, that's no longer my dream,"

_What?_ Tommy asked, feeling the tension building and the knot in his stomach reforming.

"Due to some experiences—life and death experiences, I might say, I found that life was so important and I only live once so I had to make the most of it and live it to the fullest. That's why, instead of dedicating my life to become a world well-known athlete or own my gymnastics center, I'd rather be a good housewife. A pretty simple dream, isn't it? But for me, it is the greatest thing to do. Getting married with the person that I love, having kids, and living in a beautiful pink and white house with white fences near the shore… I can spend my days cooking, helping my children with their homework, baking cookies and waiting for my husband comes home from work,"

Ms. Appleby seemed to be as excited as Kim and she said, "That was really, really nice, Kimberly. And perhaps you have found the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?"

Had the situation been different, Tommy would be thrilled and honored to have Kim looking at him with that megawatt smile of hers.

"In fact, I have. It's Oliver. Tommy Oliver," Kim said in a husky voice and she _really_ said it the way the legendary Sean Connery introduced himself as James Bond.

It only took two seconds until cat-calls and whistles filled the classroom which slowly but surely got under his skin. Someone poked his shoulders and patted his back. Blushing to the root of his hair, Tommy shook his head and tried as he might, his tongue went numb that nothing came out of his mouth.

"We're probably going to get married soon after we graduate high school," Kim continued, her eyes shining at him. "Isn't that right, Handsome?"

The laughters, Kim's smile, everything was like a wall pressed up against him. Raising a hand to his head, he tried to block all the voices. He mustn't give up. If Rita was trying to get to him, he couldn't let this break him. "No… I'm, we're not-,"

"Tommy,"

"I said no!"

"Tommy!"

"Huh?" His eyes fluttered open and he saw his father leaning over him. Relief rushed through him and he had to prevent himself from kissing his father for the save.

"You have taken it to the next level, son. I've been shaking you for almost ten minutes," Mr. Oliver said with a slight humor in his voice. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just had a… a bad dream," A really bad dream. Nightmare. This was a first; most of the time, his dreams which revolved around Kim had always been the good ones. He eyed the cordless phone in his dad's hand and asked nervously. "Are you done? I have to make a phone call,"

"Sure,"

Clutching the plastic receiver in his hands, Tommy tried to even out his breath. For what's probably the twentieth times, Tommy questioned himself if today was just not one of his lucky days or he was just plainly dense.

How could he say that to _her_, of all people? Less than five hours ago, he had shoved his big foot into his mouth and he wanted to beat himself up for that. But wait, it wasn't exactly his fault. What he did was not the best way to get out of the difficult situation, but he was simply defending himself.

Okay, it had nothing to do with both options, he was simply stupid.

"_So, Tommy… what's up with you and our pink ranger?" Zack asked lightly and the newest member of the team nearly dropped the dumbbells in his hands. The black ranger laughed when he saw Tommy's stunned expression. "Take it easy, bro. I was just asking," _

_Despite of wanting to get up and leave the Youth Center, he just couldn't. Leaving would only answer Zack's one million dollar question non-verbally. "What are you talking about?" He tried to respond as cool as possible, which was not an easy thing to do. It seemed that he always made a fun of himself everytime he talked about Kimberly. It could be said that she was the first person to be his friend in this brand new school. He was not exactly a social butterfly and he wouldn't blame the students in this school to find the aura around him kind of creepy. He never admitted this to anyone, but he was pleased that Bulk and Skull chose that day to harass Kim by her locker. _

"_Don't play dumb," Zack rolled his sleeves and dropped to his hands and legs to do some push-ups. "We all know that you have a certain thing for Kim. I just want to make sure you don't end up hurting her, because as much as we love you as our friend slash teammate, Jason would never hesitant to kick your butt to Goldar's citadel," _

_Was he really that obvious? He had thought he was being pretty good in hiding those new, complicated feelings involving Kimberly Hart. The words were formed and flew from his mouth before he realized it. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but a girl who could easily sweep the floor with me isn't exactly my type. Isn't that a bit scary? That's kind of a turn off for me," He reasoned, recalling one of their afternoon spars where Kim had beat his ass up. It was pretty difficult to concentrate when the opponent had such a beautiful face and the fact that she had on a tight tanktop and shorts didn't make things get any better for him either. _

_And that was only the beginning. _

"_Hey, Tommy," _

"_Hey, Jase," He replied and grunted, feeling his muscles burning. "What's up?" _

"_Tommy," Jason called again, there's a note of persistent in his voice that made Tommy lift his head up. And by the time his eyes met Kim's doe brown eyes, his hands gave out and the heavy dumbbells fell and crashed his toes. _

"_Oh, shit," He hissed painfully. _

"_Dang, that's got to be hurt," Zack winced and began to crack up. However, his laughter soon subsided when he realized that noone was laughing. "I mean-,"_

"_You know what?" Kim said, her hand brushing a strand of hair from her face nonchallantly. "I think I'm going to see if Trini needs any helps," Without sparing another glance, she stormed off to where Trini and Billy were making a banner for the upcoming dance. _

"_Real smooth, Tommy," Jason groaned. _

He had hoped Kim didn't hear his conversation with Zack, but seeing her pratically running away… It's a good thing that Jason didn't knock his lights off, partly because he knew that Tommy was only making excuses. Kim hadn't said a word to him after that. She joined the gang at the usual table and enjoyed their smoothies, but she was being awfuly, uncharacteristically quiet. Wonder why…

The hurt reflected hin her eyes refused to leave his mind at peace. How could he have been so insensitive and stupid? He was lucky if after this day, Kim still wanted to talk to him.

Contrary to what he had said, Kim was a great ranger. Her strength, amongst other things, was something that he had always admired. But of course, the dream was a nightmare. He'd rather have her hate him for the rest of her life than change into someone that wasn't her. Sure, Kimberly could be a little air-headed sometimes, but wasn't she the one who taught him not to take life so seriously?

That dream was wrong in every sense of the word. Before he lost his nerve, his thumbs pressed her numbers and he walked around in circles as he waited for the other person on the other line to answer.

"_Hello?" _

"Kimberly? Wait! Please don't hang up, I need to talk to you," _Please say yes!_ She should, _must_, give him a chance to apologize to her and perhaps he could build up the courage to ask her to go to the dance with him; as his date. "Could you meet me at the park?"

**-end-**

* * *

**:: Alright, I thought it would be fun to see them fighting without a spell hanging over their heads. I don't think we ever saw something like that in the show. Anyway, thanks for reading and please let me know what you think. No flame though. **

**- Yuuri ;)**


End file.
